


you deserve not but the best (so guard the heart inside your chest)

by cheshire_lion



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Unhappy Ending, Yasha’s POV, as of the characters’ knowledge both m9 ships are unrequited!, c2 ep91 spoilers, there is no resolution to this within this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22352554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshire_lion/pseuds/cheshire_lion
Summary: Beau joins Yasha on the Xhorhouse balcony for a conversation.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Reani (mentioned), Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett (mentioned), Yasha/Zuala (mentioned)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 61





	you deserve not but the best (so guard the heart inside your chest)

Beau sits down next to Yasha, decidedly casual. Her hair is longer than Yasha remembers, more scars are scattered on the skin her new outfit exposes, but other than that she looks just like before. Before Yasha had gone with Obann, before she’d stabbed her. Yasha still remembers the sudden give of penetrating her body, the crunch of bone beneath the tip of her blade, the sword traveling down, down, down. She remembers Beau sitting next to her, just like this, months ago, telling her about Tori. It feels like overlapping images she can’t quite join into one.

Beau clears her throat. She looks beautiful in the warm glow of the fairy lights. “So crayons, huh?”

Yasha closes her book around her index finger. “I was making a joke,” she says.

“I figured.” Beau looks down, and Yasha immediately feels like she was intruding. She shifts her gaze towards the city. The view from their balcony is good. She’s glad that she has a room adjacent to it.

She doesn’t know what to say.

Beau preempts her. “So, titties, huh? Pretty great.”

Yasha has to hold in a laugh and snorts before dissolving into a soft smile when she looks back at Beau. She’s nervously wringing her hands, her foot tapping against the stone floor.

“Pretty great,” Yasha agrees.

Beau gives a sharp nod and opens her mouth just to close it again a couple of seconds later. Apparently she hadn’t given much thought to where the conversation would go. But she’d decided to talk to Yasha, despite everything. Yasha waits. Time doesn’t feel real in the perpetual night anyway and she’d always been patient. Beau clasps her hands together, shifts, and lets her shoulders drop. Yasha looks down at her book.

“How are you?” Beau asks.

Yasha barely knows how to answer easy questions sometimes, but putting into words how she feels after everything seems close to impossible. She’s not even sure she wants to. “Fine,” she says instead, looking up, and Beau nods slowly. She doesn’t believe her, but she’s not pressing her on it either. “How have you been?” Yasha asks.

“Good.” They’re both liars then. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me too.” Yasha sets the book down beside herself. She’d missed them, missed Beau, but that feels too presumptuous to say. She’s not entirely sure she has the right to feel it just yet.

They’re pausing again and slowly but surely it feels less awkward. Wind rustles through the tree, distant conversation from one of the downstairs rooms carries up to them.

“What are you reading?”

Beau really is trying. She’s never known when to stop. Yasha tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and licks her lips before answering. “It’s a book on poisonous plants Caleb leant me.” It’s good. Not riveting, but interesting enough to pass a few unoccupied hours.

“Oh,” Beau says, her expression lighting up. “He got that from Reani.”

“Reani?” Yasha tilts her head in question.

“Yeah. The other aasimar.”

“Ah.” Yasha nods. “The one with the halo.” She draws a circle around her head with one finger before dropping her hand back into her lap. She remembers the halo being what they thought set her apart from Yasha most immediately. But Yasha can’t stop thinking about her angel guide - if her own life would’ve been any different if she’d had one, and if she would’ve wanted that kind of influence. To have worship thrust upon you must feel claustrophobic, but perhaps it feels safe, too.

“Yeah,” Beau says, maybe just to continue talking. “She’s cool. You would’ve liked her.”

“Because we’re both aasimar?”

“No.” Beau tilts her head. “Because you thought Jester was cute and interesting the minute you met her, and Reani is equally... excitable. And she druidcrafts flowers - makes crowns out of them.”

Yasha’s stomach fills with warmth despite herself. “You remember what I said the day we met?”

“Well, yeah,” Beau says, as if it’s no big deal.

“And you like Reani?”

Beau’s whole demeanor changes. “Yeah.” She grins, looking out over the city. She doesn’t lose the softness of their conversation though, doesn’t harden into her presentation outside of the group. It’s comforting.

Something about the darker color of her cheeks makes Yasha ask, “As more than friends?”

That seems to bring Beau back, and her smile falls into a more serious line. “No. I mean we slept together, but no.”

“So there’s someone else? Or you just like casual sex?”

“Yes.”

It takes a second to register what Beau said, and Yasha’s stomach drops. She opens and closes her book. She doesn’t know what she expected, after months of being gone. Of fighting against them.

“You alright?” Beau asks.

Yasha does her best to avoid her eyes. “Yes.”

“Okay?” Beau sounds unsure whether or not to believe her. She pauses. “So casual sex is not your thing, Miss ‘experience with boobs’?”

“You don’t have to collect experience with... multiple people, I don’t think,” Yasha says.

Beau shrugs. “No. You can tho.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Do you mind hearing about that?”

“Not really. I don’t -” Yasha pauses, swallows. It hurts her throat. “I don’t judge,” she ends the sentence, satisfied.

“You seem bothered though.” Beau is staring at her intently, and Yasha worries she might see through her. Then Beau bites her lip. “Don’t worry, it’s not you I have a crush on. I remember you saying you weren’t looking for anything, too.”

“Didn’t deter you in the beginning.”

“Yeah.” Beau cringes. “Sorry about that.”

“No, that’s -” She stops. She doesn’t know what to say. It’s not okay. She feels sick. Hope is such a perverse thing, and she wishes she could delete the feeling from herself.

Beau is looking at her expectantly, so Yasha asks, “Who is it?” to omit having to continue her previous sentence. She thinks she might’ve just propelled herself out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Beau is blushing even harder now. She turns around to check they’re alone and no one's in her room, and suddenly Yasha knows.

“Jester,” she says. It’s harder to be angry now. Of course she’d fall for Jester. Jester is light in the face of darkness, even her own. Yasha has barely figured out how to navigate her failures enough to function. Jester is pretty, too, blue skin, sleek muscles, freckles that stretch across her cheeks when she smiles.

Beau doesn’t seem to notice Yasha’s ugly mood and smiles. It’s a sad smile, like she hates hope as much as Yasha does. “That obvious, huh?”

Beau’s eyes are cast to the ground, her hands pressed together between her knees, her spine bent forward protectively around her stomach and heart. Yasha can’t bear it.

“I only put two and two together just now,” she tries.

Beau frees her hands and buries her face in them. Her groan is muffled against her palms, and Yasha is glad to be shielded from it. She has to try hard to sympathise.

“How long?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Beau says. “Can you pinpoint when you fell in love?”

“No,” Yasha admits.

“How -“ She stops, draws a shaky breath. “How did you and Zuala make it work?”

Yasha instinctively shifts away from Beau. “Why?”

“Because I don’t know if... do you think she might feel the same?”

It’s gut punch after gut punch tonight, and Yasha has to remind herself that Beau doesn’t realize she’s hurting her.

“Maybe,” she concedes. “It’s hard to tell. I’m not sure she’s even into...” She lets her voice trail off.

“Boobs,” Beau says, so deadpan she’s giving Yasha a run for her money.

Yasha can’t help but smile. “Sure, boobs.” She thinks about the possibility. Thinks about Beau getting hurt if she gives her false hope, too. “But Beau, I’m not sure romance is on her radar right now, and if it were, if she’s into...boobs, and if so, if she’s into you.”

“A lot of ifs.” Beau laughs. It doesn’t sound happy. “She keeps flirting with Fjord and I know she doesn’t mean to hurt me but it does. Hurt, I mean. It feels so obvious to me that I like her that it’s hard not to be a little mad at times.” Beau looks to her other side, away from Yasha, as if the admission is shameful.

Yasha has always thought of feelings as something that’s just there, something you can’t control. You can control your actions, and that is what you should be judged by, but you shouldn’t make yourself suffer for a gut reaction.

“I know what you mean,” Yasha says, and Beau tilts her head before apparently deciding not to press the issue.

“So what makes you say she’s not into romance?”

Yasha considers the question, weighs her words carefully. “I think she likes the idea of romance, it’s just... I’m not sure she wants the real thing right now. I’m not sure she’d even like it if Fjord made a move. Not long term. There’s too much we’re all still figuring out.” She pauses. Maybe she’d said too much. Maybe she’s wrong and Beau has a chance. “I don’t know.”

Beau makes a discontent sound. “You’re probably right.”

They sit in silence again, and Yasha wrestles down the part of herself that is screaming for her to talk to Beau about what this means to her, and how unfair it was to make her hope - had she really read more into their interactions than Beau meant?

“So what do I do?” Beau asks after a couple of minutes, and Yasha sighs.

“Ask her. Ask her if she feels the same.” She looks out at the night sky, hopes for the comfort of thunder and being pulled up and away. It doesn’t come. Her stomach feels empty and her chest aches.

“She’ll hate me.”

“She won’t. She loves you. And you’re...you’re wonderful, Beau. She’d be lucky to have you.”

Beau’s eyes are wide, and Yasha doesn’t allow herself more than a glimpse out of the corner of her eye before turning back away.

“You don’t think that a relationship within the group would be like, super complicated?”

Gods, she sounds young sometimes. “Of course,” Yasha says. “But I also think it’d be worth the complications, if it’s love.”

Beau hums contemplatively. “Maybe. Only if she feels the same.”

“You asked about Zuala,” Yasha says. She reaches into her heart and forcefully rips the memory out and to the surface. It feels like she needs to right now. “I wish I would’ve spent all the time I had with her. Before I kissed her for the first time, I didn’t know how she felt. I made sure to be slow, to ask if it was okay, and she said yes,” Yasha swallows, “And yes again. And she kissed me back. And that same day I began wishing I hadn’t waited two years, in spite of how dangerous it was.” She shrugs, her throat thick with emotion, tears obscuring her view of the city.

A hand touches her shoulder. Beau has gotten up. Yasha laughs dryly, and it becomes a sob on its way up. “Sorry.” She wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

Beau sits down next to her, without saying anything. Her arm winds around Yasha’s shoulder, her head comes to rest against the other. “You can talk to us about her, you know?”

“I know. I’m just... scared of forgetting, I guess. I don’t know.”

 _And I don’t want to talk to you about it,_ Yasha thinks. _Not when I want you in a similar, although much less familiar way. Not when a part of me still hopes we have a chance._

“So you think I should talk to her?” Beau asks, head still on Yasha’s shoulder. She’s so warm Yasha thinks she might burn up.

“Yes, I think you should talk to her,” she says, the tremble of grief in her voice disguising the guilt she feels, and the heartache. Beau gets up and Yasha immediately misses the contact. She watches as Beau hurries towards her room and turns in the doorframe. 

“Thank you,” she says, and then she’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and a special thank you to dorcasdeadowes for beta reading! If you feel like leaving a comment, I really appreciate them, long or short <3


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